World Tibet Network News Monday, June 29, 1998

By TYLER MARSHALL

Los Angeles Times, Sunday, June 28, 1998

BEIJING -- In the eight months since President Clinton's foreign policy teame levated religious freedom and human rights in Tibet to a priority issue in Washington's prickly relationship with China, visible progress has been virtually zero. Prospects for any kind of break through during Clinton's nine-day trip to China were considered so bleak that the State Department's recently created post of Tibet policy coordinator, occupied by Gregory Craig, was not even a part of the 200-strong American delegation for the trip. And the 14-page document titled "Achievements of the U.S.-China Summit" issued Saturday after Clinton's meeting with Chinese President Jiang Zemin does not mention Tibet. Then came Saturday's extraordinary news conference between the two leaders,and suddenly, amid the unscripted public exchanges on the most sensitive of issues that divide the two countries, Tibet burst into the spotlight.

Responding to Clinton's opening statement that included a call for China to open a dialogue with Tibet's spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, in return for the Dalai Lama's pledge to accept that Tibet is part of China, Jiang declared a conditioned readiness to do just that. "Actually, as long as the Dalai Lama can publicly make the statement and a commitment that Tibet is an inalienable part of China, and he must also recognize Taiwan as a province of China, then the door to dialogue and negotiation is open," Jiang said. While Jiang repeated his routine denunciation of followers of the Dalai Lama during the news conference, he conspicuously omitted the personal attacks on the Dalai Lama himself that almost always accompany Chinese statements on Tibet. The Dalai Lama has been consistently cast by the Chinese propaganda machine as a treasonous demon.

Clinton, who knows both leaders well, concluded the news conference by describing the Dalai Lama as "an honest man" and suggesting that if Jiang met the Tibetan leader, "they would like each other very much". U.S. officials, clearly caught off balance by the spontaneous exchanges, were reluctant to assess their possible longer-term impact. The Dalai Lama has already come close to declaring Tibet a part of China, and while Jiang's call for him to recognize Taiwan as a Chinese province is a new demand, U.S. officials did not see the condition as insurmountable. "It's puzzling, but I don't think it's a show stopper," a White House official said. At a Chinese government news conference later in the day, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzhao quickly fell back to more normal practice, dismissing the Dalai Lama as one who "wants to split the motherland" and who is the central obstacle to improving conditions in Tibet. Still, for Tibetan activists, Saturday's public comments by Chinese and American leaders -- on a

n issue whose very mention has long been considered by the Chinese as a taboo -- is nothing short of a stunning success. That the exchanges unfolded in China live and apparently uncensored to television and radio audiences estimated in the hundreds of millions merely added to the sweetness of the moment.

"We're very pleased that there's an open and public debate on Tibet," said John Ackerly, president of the Washington-based International Campaign for Tibet, a non-profit organization that supports the Dalai Lama's cause. "Afterall these years, we're especially glad that Tibetans themselves could see this. They've worked long and hard to get the issue to this level, and it's there now." The Clinton administration's decision to push actively on the long-dormant issue of Tibet stems in part from Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright's intense interest in human rights. However, when she raised Tibet during a half-hour meeting with Jiang in May,she was reportedly treated to an extended lecture.